3 key points to check your eligibility to do VLSI or Embedded Systems

3 key points to check your eligibility to do VLSI or Embedded Systems

VLSI and embedded systems are upcoming domain in India. India spends billion of dollars every year to bring electronics consumer devices to India.
As the Make In India programme is thriving in India, there are lot of manufacturers are looking to make in India and Made In India. There is going to be huge skill gap in this two domain.
Most of the electronics manufacturing industry will need Embedded and VLSI engineer in bulk to sustain the need in the market.

But the study pattern in Indian Colleges and universities are not as par for producing quality engineers in this fields. The essence of VLSI and embedded is in practical product development, practical mindset is more important than the theoretical knowledge. Indian and most of universities focuses to give theoretical knowledge to people, instead of core practical and development skills to develop their careear. That is the only biggest barrier today in India for students to enter into VLSI and embedded field.

Any graduate who would have studied the basics of electronics is eligible to do a course in VLSI or Embedded Systems. Any engineering graduate is eligible, even MCA, BSC electronics students also.

Most often students if there is anyone who has exposure in computer programming and electronics can approach to enter into embedded and VLSI industry, what they have to acquire as basic understanding to enter. In this post I shall mention 7 important points which will help to get some clarity:

You may be surprised to emphasize the point of that embedded and VLSI are nothing but practical knowledge and application of electroncs.

Electronics is basically achieved by Circuits.

Circuits can be divided into Discrete Circuits and Integrated Circuit.

If we can not put everything into an IC and if some ready made components are available, we use them to achieve Electronics Circuits, This is called Discrete. This field is called HARDWARE. We go to electronics market and gather all the components and soldering them to form PCB, Since these components are soldered to the PCB and Circuit is printed on the board, it will be difficult to change. But ultimately to make a tangible Electronics product, HARDWARE is must. So there is always demand for a HARDWARE Engineer is there in the market.

3. µP – Here the circuit is Flexible Circuit which is Programmable and fabricated inside Silicon

ASIC – The ASIC is basically Low power, Cheap on high volume, Small in size and Fast. But investment which is needed for ASIC will be huge. Normally big companies do this activity. It Requires VLSI (verilog, VHDL, C++, Digital) Knowledge.

FPGA – The FPGA is High Power, Cheap on Low Volume, Fast – But it takes more time to implement. It Also Requires VLSI (verilog, VHDL, C++, Digital) Knowledge to develop applications on FPGA.

µP – The uP is High Power, Cheap, Slow. Easy to use. This requires Programming knowledge(C, C++) to make applications in it.

The designing of ASIC and FPGA is called VLSI and µP implementation is called Embedded.

Both VLSI and Embedded fields are having high demand. Since ECE students are generally not learning programming as part their course work, CSE students gets most preference for Embedded. That is the reason ECE students find it difficult to enter into Embedded field and feels that no job opportunity in Embedded field. Actually lots of job opportunities in Embedded field, but ECE students can get these jobs because they lack programming ability. Even VLSI field is all about programming, but this field requires Electronics knowledge also. That is the reason CSE students could not able to enter into VLSI and industry prefers ECE students. That is reason ECE students think lots of job opportunities in VLSI.

Actually Embedded Job Opportunities are much more than VLSI. Since ECE and CSE both enter into Embedded, Embedded Job opportunities looks less for ECE students.

There are enormous job opportunities in these fields, both embedded and VLSI. The student has to take his ownership and responsibility that how he prepare for these fields during their studies. If you follow our Indian University Syllabus and teaching (most of the universities), you will come out as useless with a degree paper and only eligible for IT support services and BPO jobs. So plan carefully during you degree. Utilize your time very effectively. Do not depend on your college for Knowledge or Skill on these fields.